Posts tagged Sydney Greenstreet

Sydney Greenstreet is perhaps the greatest character actor in Hollywood history and, Frank argues in this blog, one of the Hollywood’s greatest actors, period. (How many of you out there agree?)

Greenstreet was born in England (Sandwich, Kent) in 1879, one of eight children of a leather merchant. At 18, he went abroad to Ceylon (now Sri Lanka) to try his hand at running a tea plantation. Back in England Greenstreet tried managing a brewery and other jobs before hitting on the idea of attending acting school. He made his London stage debut in 1902, assaying the role of a villain in Sherlock Homes.

By the time he showed up in 1941 (at the age of 61) on director John Huston’sThe Maltese Falcon set at Warner Bros., Greenstreet had logged 40 years as a stage actor on both sides of the pond. In his 1980 memoir, An Open Book, Huston wrote: The English actor Sydney Greenstreet had worked on Broadway but this was, I believe, his first film.

There’s always talk about the difficulty of making the transition from stage to screen, but you wouldn’t know it to watch Greenstreet; he was perfect from the word go, the Fat Man, inside out. I had only to sit back and take delight in him and his performance.

Greenstreet was nominated for an Academy Award in the best supporting actor category for his screen debut as “the fat man.” (Remember whom he lost to that year, in 1942? Hint: he was a fellow Brit.)

To its credit, Warner Brothers knew what it had in the 300-pound-plus Greenstreet and kept him busy over the next nine years – 25 features from 1941 through 1950, averaging more than two pictures per year.

Greenstreet’s girth became something of his signature. As the slender Sam Spade, Humphrey Bogart wore his own clothes in character. Greenstreet’s outfits, on the other hand, had to be specially tailored by the studio costume department. Nothing less would fit.

Greenstreet used size to great advantage, playing erudite spies, a sleazy tycoons, Nazi agents, a corrupt Southern sheriff, among other juicy roles. He always executed his parts with panache and a delicious appreciation of evil that often outshone the histrionics of the top-billed star.

In 1942’s Across the Pacific, starring Bogart and Mary Astor, Greenstreet found himself portraying a Japanese-speaking academic, a specialist in Philippine economics who holds “the chair of sociology at the university there” and who freely spouts politically incorrect observations about Asians.

In 1943’s Backround to Danger, director Raoul Walsh’s treatment of a spy thriller from the reliable Eric Ambler, the mustache-sporting Greenstreet has to cope with star George Raft and a daffy plot about Nazis supposedly enticing the then USSR to invade Turkey in order to destabilize the region. Greenstreet oozes evil in the role of “Colonel Robinson,” another Nazi mastermind in disguise. In this film he spoke German.

His voice was unique, and it was inevitable that he would also become a star on radio and perhaps inevitable that he would be cast as a portly detective. One of the most famous and successful characters in mystery novels is Nero Wolfe and for radio, Greenstreet and Wolfe were the perfect match.

Nero Wolfe had been on radio throughout the 1940s with various actors in the role, but in the early 1950s Greenstreet was cast in a new series based on the famed detective and Wolfe creator Rex Stout declared him a splendid choice.

Greenstreet died in 1954, at the age of 74, felled by kidney disease and diabetes among other ailments. His career was short and fruitful. As long as there are those of use who prize classic movies, he will never be forgotten.

Just in case you’ve come in late, and this is your first or second visit to Classic Movie Chat, we’d like to remind you that one of our treasures is The Donald Gordon Collection of Never Before Seen Photos.

Hello again. Joe Morella and Frank Segers here to bring you snapshots from the Golden Era of Hollywood.

You won’t see these photos anywhere else — at least not initially. We can’t control what happens after they are published. But for now, as you read this, they are unique to our site.

That Classic Movie Chat is the first to publish these pictures is just one of the reasons why we think our site is so special. The Donald Gordon Collection was a gift to us, and now it is a gift to you, fellow classic movie fan.

Today’s photos are typical. That’s Linda Darnell on the left schmoozing with Donald himself. On the right, Frank’s favorite shot, shows one of Hollywood’s best character actors ever — Sydney Greenstreet – emerging from the Brown Derby Restaurant.

You might well ask, just who is Donald Gordon, and how did we come by his stash of great photos?

John Madden, our late pal and fellow classic movie-lover, bequeathed to Joe a veritable treasure trove of informal, impromptu black-and-white photographs that more than anything we can think of provide informal, personalized glimpses of Hollywood in its Golden Age. Donald Gordon and John were close friends.

Before he died Donald gave John this marvelous cache of photos. These snapshots are the kind that are often taken at parties, outings and family events of one kind or another.

But these were not the usual shots of unrecognizable or forgotten relatives at their leisure. No, the subjects in these snapshots were – and perhaps still are — some of the most recognizable faces on the planet. And in most shots there is also Donald Gordon.

Donald was a young actor who found himself under contract at Columbia Pictures during World War II.

As you’ll see on our blog, the amazing informality – almost intimacy – of Donald with his subjects is a pleasure to behold. No posed studio shots in full makeup, staged with the precision of a Swiss watch. These were shots of some of Hollywood’s best-known personalities in mufti, so to speak, lounging around pools, front lawns, departing restaurants or in actual costume on the set.

We are sure that you, diligent classic movie fan that you are, will instantly recognize those posing alone or with Donald. But you may not recognize all subjects. That’s where the fun part comes in.

We’ll be running a snapshot taken from Donald’s collection on a regular basis, asking you to identify the person posing with him. In most cases that should be pretty easy. But not in all cases. As knowledgeable as you are, we are out to stump you.

We hope you enjoy the Donald Gordon Collection as much as we do. The photographs evoke a smaller, more neighborly and much different Hollywood – before television became a mass medium, decades before videos and DVDs, and an eternity away from the internet and the many digital platforms of today.

Celebrityhood hadn’t quite become the national obsession it is today. There were no paparazzi as such (by the way, which film inspired that descriptive term?) and access to the highest-level stars was made possible by being a member of a studio family, as Donald was.

His snapshots reveal a sunnier, more relaxed, more human Hollywood. It’s not too grandiose to suggest that they capture precious moments in time. Classic Movie Chat will be sharing The Donald Gordon Collection with you in the coming days and months. So, be sure to check in with us — early and often.